There's a character in the first town you can buy respecs from. They let you redo the last three points you spent.

That's very little....
That means I have to decide on a build as soon as I start a character just like in Diablo II

Why did they design it like that..? Oh well, if that is their design then I guess it's balanced for that.

It was a compromise. Some of the devs wanted full respecs. Some wanted no respecs. http://clockworkcore.org/tl2rr.html Use Rapid Respec. It'll even remove the cheater flag. It's your game. Play it how you want.

It was a compromise. Some of the devs wanted full respecs. Some wanted no respecs. http://clockworkcore.org/tl2rr.html Use Rapid Respec. It'll even remove the cheater flag. It's your game. Play it how you want.

Personally I'm for full respecs

That's why I like Diablo III. You can't cheat there. Torchlight II is gonna take a whole lot of selfdiscipline then.

If people use mods, they still get the achievements? If they do, the hard achievements lose their value.
I'm a competitive RTS guy so I always have the challenge in mind.

Is there any modpack that the developers have embraced? Like Community Edition of Xenonauts that only enhances the game?

There are tons of hackers playing Diablo III. So many that Blizzard bans them in huge sweeping banwaves every six months or so. There's no such thing as a cheat-free online game. People who want to cheat will find ways of doing so no matter what developers do so it's pointless to let it bother you.

While I understand where you're coming from, in your initial post you yourself asked for a way to respec 'legit'. It's not legit if you're looking at it in terms of wanting it to be more competitive. Part of competition is thinking out your moves and accepting the consequences of your mistakes even if it results in a loss or (as in this game) a less capable character. With Torchlight II you're supposed to learn from your mistakes then apply the lessons learned to your next play through.

Besides-the strength of character required to not overuse respecs is the same as the strength it takes to not cheat in a competition. If you can do it with other games you can do it with this one. In the end cheating in a non-competitive game like this doesn't matter. It's your game. It's meant to be played however you want to play it. How much (or how little) you cheat only impacts your enjoyment as much as you let it.